For the first three years of the league’s existence, competition between nationalism and social revolution had been contained. But after the meeting in Hong Kong the conflict broke out into the open, resulting ultimately in the destruction of the league. At first the discontent was centered within the leading group of the league’s regional committee in Tonkin; its first secretary was Tran Van Cung. A native of Nghe An and a former member of the Tan Viet Revolutionary Party who had taken part in the December 1927 Canron uprising and served time in a Chinese jail, Cung had attended the meeting at Lam Due Thu’s house in Hong Kong and had been distressed by what he considered the ideological flabbiness of the line adopted by the new league leadership. He didn’t believe it possible to talk of national independence and love of country and expect to earn the support of poor peasants and workers. He felt it necessary to address their practical economic interests. Cung’s argument was not well received at the meeting. On his return to Hanoi, he persuaded other members of the Tonkin regional committee of the correctness of his views, and they began to plot a response.19
One source for their concern was the composition of the organization’s membership. In Cung’s view, the league had not been making a sufficient effort to recruit followers from among the small but growing industrial proletarian. The labor organizer Ton Duc Thang was a prominent exception. After working as a naval mechanic in France during World War I, he had returned to Indochina to set up a union among dockworkers in Saigon, and a few “red” unions had been established in factories in the industrial cities in central Viernam. Elsewhere, however, relatively few workers had been introduced into the league. Recruitment continued to rely primarily on the activities of returning students from China—most of whom were from scholar-gentry families—who spread support for the movement among friends and relatives.20
Likewise, there was relatively little activity by league members in rural areas, although a few peasant associations were set up in 1928. Even though anti-French riots had been breaking out in various areas of the countryside since the French takeover at the end of the last century, the league had not made a major effort to build a base outside the cities. The vast majority of members of the league (the Sûreté estimate was 90 percent) came from the urban bourgeoisie.
A second source of discontent on the part of Tran Van Cung and his colleagues was the dilatory attitude taken by the league leadership in moving toward the establishment of a formal Communist Party, a decision that they felt was absolutely necessary to firm up the ideological underpinnings of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement. According to Cung, when he had raised the issue at the May 1928 meeting in Hong Kong, Lam Due Thu had brushed him off with a simple “We’ll see.”
Such radical discontents had apparently begun to surface before the convening of the Sixth Comintern Congress, held in Moscow the summer of 1928. But the congress—the first to be held since the 1924 meeting, which had been attended by Nguyen Ai Quoc—undoubtedly added impetus to the complaints, for the decisions reached in Moscow signaled a major shift in direction for global Communist strategy. Disappointed by recent events in China, where the Leninist alliance between Nationalists and Communists had ended in a bloody massacre of CCP militants, and impelled by domestic political considerations to adopt a more leftist line in internal affairs, Joseph Stalin (who was now engaged in a major struggle with Leon Trotsky for dominance over the Soviet Communist Party) compelled the delegates at the congress to abandon the broad united front strategy that had been originally initiated at the Second Congress eight years earlier. Communisr parties in colonial areas were now instructed to reject alliances with bourgeois nationalist parties on the grounds that the native bourgeoisie had turned away from revolution and could no longer be trusted as an ally of the proletariat. Furthermore, Communist parties themselves must be purged of their unreliable petty bourgeois elements and “bolshevized.” Practically speaking, this meant that working-class representation in all communist organizations should be increased, and Party rectification movements initiated to cleanse them of impure elements. Party members with middle-class origins should be required to undergo a process of “prolerarianization” (often that meant literally to put on overalls and attempt to find work in factories) to increase their awareness of the proletarian outlook,21
The Sixth Congress, under Stalin’s prodding, claimed to see the rise of a new revolutionary wave on the horizon, as growing economic instability in Europe raised the specter of a new world depression. Communist and proto-Communist organizations throughout the world were instructed to do their utmost, not only to increase their own capacity to respond to the rising level of discontent in their own societies, but also to encourage the heightening of revolutionary awareness by initiating strikes and mass demonstrations among the workers and the poorer peasantry, and to set up Party cells in factories, schools, and villages, all in preparation for a future revolutionary upsurge.
Since it was not yet a formal Communist Party, the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League did not have a formal representative at the Sixth Congress, but three Vietnamese did attend the meeting as representatives of the FCP. One was Nguyen Van Tao, a native of Nghe An who had been expelled from school in Saigon for radical activities during the mid-1920s and later traveled secretly to France. Speaking under the name of An, Tao presented a major address at the congress. Tao argued that, although some felt that Vietnam was not ready for a Communist Party, there was in fact a small and growing proletariat in the country and a Communist Party was urgently needed, because the local bourgeoisie could not lead the revolution. In fact, such “national reformist” organizations as the Constitutionalist Party and the Parti Annamite de l’Indépendance (formed in Paris by Nguyen Ai Quoc’s onetime colleague Nguyen The Truyen) were “absolutely dangerous” in arguing for the peaceful evacuation of Indochina by the French, since such an eventuality might reduce popular support for a genuine social revolution. After the Sixth Congress adjourned, the Comintern sent a secret directive to the league through the FCP providing instructions for future activities.22
The decisions of the Sixth Congress, when they became available in Vietnam at the end of the year, sharpened the debate and intensified the determination of the radical faction in Tonkin to further its bid to transform the league into a more ideologically focused Communist Party. The leader of the agitation continued to be Tran Van Cung, who had become convinced by his own experience working as a factory laborer that vague patriotic slogans would not induce urban workers to support the league. The organization must emphasize issues of primal importance to workers—higher salaries, better working conditions, reduced working hours—in order to win strong labor support. And this could not be done, he felt, without the transformation of the league into a full-fledged Communist Party.
The issue came to a head at the first formal congress of the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, held in Hong Kong in May 1929. The seventeen delegates at the congress represented about 1200 members, with 800 from Tonkin, and 200 each from Annam and Cochin China. Soon after his arrival, Tran Van Cung met with Le Hong Son to suggest that the league be disbanded and replaced by a Communist Party. Le Hong Son was not adamantly opposed to the proposal. As a member of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s inner Communist group from the beginning and one of the most formidable figures within the movement, Son was certainly committed to the eventual transformation of the league into a full-fledged Marxist-Leninist organization. For a variety of reasons, however, he felt that the congress was not an opportune time to make such a decision. In the first place, as he told Tran Van Cung in private, many delegates at the Hong Kong congress were either too politically unsophisticated or insufficiently radical to become sincere members of a new party. Second, the formation of a Communist Party at the Hong Kong congress would obviously come to the attention of Chinese authorities in neighboring Guangdong province and encourage them to increase their repressive measures against the league. Le Hong Son counseled caution and the launching of a gradual and
covert process to transform the league into an organization that could more effectively carry out the directives of the Sixth Comintern Congress.23
The headstrong Cung, however, remained determined to take the issue to the floor of the congress. When he and other Tonkin delegates brought their proposal formally before the meeting, they found their primary opponent to be Chairman Lam Due Thu, who remained unalterably opposed to the formation of a Communist Party and rejected the proposal out of hand. In a burst of anger, Tran Van Cung and all but one member of the Tonkin delegation left the congress, having announced their determination to form a party among their own followers back in Vietnam. Soon after their return to Hanoi, they established a new organization, called the Indochinese Communist Party (Dong duong Cong san Dang, or CPI), and began to compete with the league for recruits, claiming that the latter was composed of “false revolutionaries” who “have never carried their efforts to the proletarian masses or adhered to the Comintern.”24
In the meantime, the remaining delegates at the congress tried to deal with the distressing rift. Most of them had been sympathetic in principle to Tran Van Cung’s position, but were reluctant to speak out against their older colleague Lam Duc Thu. After the departure of the Tonkin delegates, the congress drafted a program of action and a resolution which stated that a Communist Party was needed in Indochina, but that the time was not ripe because of the unsophisticated nature of the Vietnamese working class and its lack of understanding of revolutionary theory. After approving the resolution, the delegates formally requested recognition by the Comintern and then adjourned.25
The dispute soon degenerated from crisis into absurdity. During the months following the congress, the new CPI began to lure members away from the league, forcing the leadership in Hong Kong to realize that they had made a serious tactical error in failing to recognize the degree of support for a Communist Party among the rank and file inside Vietnam. In August, when Ho Tung Mau and Le Quang Dat were released from jail in Canton, they returned to Hong Kong and, with the agreement of Le Hong Son, decided to create a secret Communist Party of their own within the body of the league—to be called the Annam Communist Party (An nam Cong san Dang, or ACP) and to consist of the most advanced members within the organization. Executive leadership was vested in a “special branch” consisting of Le Hong Son, Ho Tung Mau, Le Quang Dat, and two others. Because the group did not trust Lam Due Thu, he was not consulred on the matter.26
The first cells of the new party were formed in Cochin China in August 1929, and it was here that, despite its name, the ACP recruited most effectively. But the split within the movement remained to be healed. That same month, Ho Tung Mau sent a letter to Tran Van Cung and the CPI leadership suggesting that delegates of both new parties should meet in Canton to discuss reunification. But the CPI leaders answered contemptuously that they were “too busy” to attend. In frustration, Ho Tung Mau suggested that the Comintern should be asked to find the means of creating a unified Communist Party:
If we don’t pay attention to forming a united Communist Party right away, then I fear we will evolve into two separate parties, one in the north and one in the south. Once two parties are formed in the country, it will be hard to achieve unity. At that time how will we be able to rely on the Third International to resolve the problem? Would it not be better to resolve it ourselves?27
Radical members of the Tan Viet Party in central Vietnam now added to the confusion by getting into the act. In a desperate effort to preserve their own following, many of whom had fled to their rivals, they renamed their own organization the Indochinese Communist League (Dong duong Cong san Lien doan). Thus, there were now three competing Communist Parties in French Indochina in addition to the league, which was now virtually moribund. It was at this point that Le Hong Son, still in Hong Kong, heard that Nguyen Ai Quoc was in Phichit. As the founder of the league and its most widely respected leader, Quoc might be able to use his formidable negotiating skills to find a way to resolve the problem. Without informing Lam Due Thu, Son instructed his colleague Le Duy Diem to go to Siam to find Nguyen Ai Quoc and ask him to return to Hong Kong to help sort out the mess. Diem left at the end of August.28
The reaction from Moscow to the bewildering events taking place in Vietnam was predictable. On October 27 it dispatched a blistering directive to the ACP leadership, criticizing it for its failure to prevent the disintegration of the revolutionary forces in Vietnam into three rival factions. The lack of a united party at this time of promise, it said, was a serious danger to the development of communism and was “entirely mistaken.” The Comintern directive openly supported Tran Van Cung’s faction in Hanoi and asserted that the objective conditions for a socialist revolution were already present in Vietnam and that “the absence of a Communist Party in the midst of the development of the workers’ and people’s movement is becoming very dangerous for the immediate future of the revolution in Indochina.” The league was criticized for showing “indecisiveness and indifference” and for not making greater efforts to recruit among Vietnamese workers. Finally, Moscow concluded that “the most urgent and important task of all the Communists in Indochina is the formation of a revolutionary party possessing the class characteristics of the proletariat, that is a popular Communist Party in Indochina.” To resolve the immediate dilemma, it suggested that a unity conference be convened under the chairmanship of a representative of the Comintern, who would be sent as a mediator.29
The sense of urgency emanating from Moscow was undoubtedly strengthened by events taking place in the capitalist world, where the economic crisis that had been brewing as a result of bank failures in Austria had recently been intensifying. When news of the sudden collapse of the stock market in New York City reached the USSR, it must have appeared to Soviet leaders that the long anticipated final disintegration of the capitalist system was finally at hand.
Throughout the remainder of 1929, the three factions continued to dispute with one another, while competing for followers and exchanging insults (the most common was “Menshevik,” a reference to Lenin’s relatively moderate rivals within the Russian revolutionary movement priot to the Bolshevik revolution). One letter from Cung’s group claimed that the ACP and the league were ant Revolutionary and must be dispersed and fused with the CPI. If the Comintern insisted on the reunification of the movement, CPI leaders would agree to do so, but would point out the difficulties involved. From Hong Kong, Ho Tung Mau, representing the ACP, tried to placate his rivals, arguing that the membership of the league in the spring of 1929 had been too heterogeneous to create a formal Communist Party; since many league members lacked the revolutionary qualities required of a good Communist, it would have been folly to suggest a Communist Party at that time. To simply establish a secret Communist Party that would be labeled as “Bolshevik” in principle, he warned, would be just the same old league under a new name.
But the CPI was not ready to compromise. In early October, it repeated its demand that Ho Tung Mau must disband the league entirely. Cung argued that he and his colleagues had realized that no one at the May conference except themselves wanted to form a secret party. They had made the proposal to “mark in the history of the revolution that the Revolutionary Youth League was not Communist, and to enable the masses to see the differences between the League and the true Communists.” When the conference rejected their proposal, they decided to quit the league and set up their own organization. With regard to finding a solution to the split, Cung suggested that any individual with the proper revolutionary credentials could be accepted into the CPI. Others could wait and try again. He also said that the CPI was willing to cooperate with the VNQDD on a temporary basis, but considered it to be a purely nationalist organization. Cooperation could take place only if the VNQDD agreed not to oppose CPI efforts to lure its members to its own party. As to the possibility that Nguyen Ai Quoc might return to Hong Kong to seek reunification, “If he returns,” Cung declared enigmatically, “we will follow toward h
im the same as toward you.”30
While the dispute was going on, the ACP leadership in Hong Kong awaited the visit of the inspector that the Comintern had referred to in its letter of October 27. They had already been informed by letter from a colleague in Moscow that their request for admission into the Comintern would not be granted until the inspection had been completed. In fact, the Dalburo, which had opened a new branch office in Shanghai (also known as the Far Eastern Bureau, here FEB) in the fell of 1928, had just decided to create a new structure to govern its relations with the various communist organizations in the region. The plan called for the creation of a new organization called the Federation of Communist Groups of Insulinde, with headquarters in Singapore. All Communist organizations in Asia that were not already organized into a national party (such as the fledgling organizations in Southeast Asia, including Indochina) were to be placed under the control of this organization, which would itself be under direct supervision of a “secretariat of the oppressed peoples of the East” attached to the FEB in Shanghai. Apparently, ACP leaders became aware of this plan sometime in the fall; a letter written by Ho Tung Mau in mid-November indicates that a Chinese delegate en route from Singapore to Shanghai to discuss the issue had stopped in Hong Kong on November 2 and told them about the project. The Vietnamese, however, were not happy about the idea. The South Seas (Nan Yang) Communist Party, which had been created in Singapore in the mid-1920s and would presumably have provided the direction for the new regional bureau there, was composed primarily of overseas Chinese from Singapore and was under the general supervision of CCP headquarters in Shanghai. Thus, in effect, the Vietnamese revolutionary movement would be placed under the ultimate direction of the CCP. In the view of many Vietnamese comrades, Chinese revolutionaries had a tendency to focus exclusively on their own objectives and were often condescending in their attitude toward the activities of other nationalities. Le Hong Son ordered Le Quang Dat to go to Shanghai to argue the ACP’s case to be named a national party directly under the FEB.32
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